GURGAON: Two employees of a private bank died after getting trapped inside their SUV when they allegedly ignored warnings by police and entered a flooded underpass in Old Faridabad late Friday night.
Viraj (26), a cashier with HDFC Bank in Sector 31 of Gurgaon, had offered to drop his manager, Punyashreya Sharma (45), at his Faridabad home because of persistent rain through the day.Around 11.30pm, Viraj attempted to accelerate his XUV 700 through the flooded underpass, unwilling to make a detour of several kilometres.
As the vehicle reached the middle of the underpass, water started to gush in through the gaps.
Realising the SUV wouldn’t move ahead, the two even tried to come out, but the doors were jammed.
Passersby rushed to their rescue and pulled Viraj out after almost 20 minutes. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where doctors declared him dead on arrival. But Sharma could not be traced till 4am. He had died by the time rescuers pulled him out of the muddy waters.
Police claimed traffic cops deployed near the underpass had signalled at the two bankers against going ahead, but they chose to bypass the warnings.
“We had our cops deployed on the spot, and they even signalled to the two men inside the SUV to stop as the underpass was flooded. But they did not pay heed, even waved their hands at the cops to tell them they would manage,” said Yashpal Sharma, a spokesperson for Faridabad police.
“The underpass was under 6-7ft of water. At one point, they realised they couldn’t navigate through and tried to escape. But they couldn’t open the vehicle’s doors despite repeated attempts. Passersby and cops pulled the bodies out,” he added.
While Viraj was from Sector 28 in Gurgaon, manager Sharma lived in Omaxe BPTP in Faridabad. Viraj was supposed to spend the night at Sharma’s house as it was quite late.
Sharma’s wife tried reaching him on his phone, but the calls did not go through. After trying for an hour or so, she set out to find him along with a few neighbours.
One of Sharma’s neighbours accused the authorities of negligence, denying there was any cop or barricade to warn them about the flooded underpass.
“There were no cops or barricades on the stretch. Police claimed they had warned locals about the waterlogged underpass a number of times. But how would others know? The man driving the car was not even from Faridabad. He was unlikely to have gauged the depth of the water. Even if there was a diversion in place, there was no sign or barricade to alert commuters. If this isn’t negligence of authorities, what is,” he asked TOI.
Inspector Samer Singh, the SHO of NIT police station, said, “We will hand over the bodies to their families after the autopsy.”